Posts Tagged ‘Space Art’

This Saturday October 29 I’ll be giving my presentation Space Art and the Exploration of Space at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst IL. It will actually be a somewhat modified version of my normal presentation because of the why of why I was asked to speak. I was contacted by a representative of the Elmhurst Art Museum after she read about the Bigelow Aerospace BEAM inflatable module on the International Space Station. She was looking for a way to connect ISS/BEAM with the museum’s BLOW UP: Inflatable Contemporary Art exhibit.

Unfortunately inflatable space art is not a "thing". However I was taken up on my offer to give my presentation about space art – which would be modified to include artist impressions of inflatable space architecture – an idea that is much older than you might think.

Many may remember TransHab, a NASA effort from the 90’s to develop an inflatable habitat for the International Space Station. While the project was canceled, all was not lost because Bigelow Aerospace had the foresight to purchase the rights to the patents developed as a part of that NASA project. This lead to the Genesis I, Genesis II, and now the BEAM inflatable modules – which makes very real the prospect for the commercial availability of private, inflatable space stations. Thank you Robert Bigelow for your vision.

Others may remember the Goodyear inflatable space station prototype from 1961. Much earlier references to inflatable space structures are to be found in the imaginations of science fiction authors. For example, from 1939 is the story Misfit by Robert Heinlein where he writes about covering an asteroid valley with a tarp-like roof and inflating.

So if you are in the area and are up for a presentation on space art, I invite you to attend my talk. Note that while there is no charge for my program, you do have to purchase a museum admission to get in. Museum admission is $8 for adults and $7 for seniors, but admission is free to all students and anyone under 18. For more about the Elmhurst Art Museum, visit the Elmhurst Art Museum web site. To learn more about my presentation, see Art and the Exploration of Space.

Program Description at Elmhurst Art Museum Programs
Saturday, October 29, 2016 – 1:00pm
Space Art and the Exploration of Space
Jim Plaxco, President of the Chicago Society for Space Studies, will be giving a lecture which explores the development and evolution of space art from its beginnings in science fiction to its use as a tool to illustrate and promote space exploration. His lecture will demonstrate the large role that inflatables have played in the exploration of space as well as the creation of space art.

The National Space Society has announced the winners of its 2016 NSS Space Settlement Student Art Contest. As one of the contest’s art judges, it was once again an interesting experience. While I did not write about my experiences judging last year’s contest, I did write about Judging the 2014 NSS Space Settlement Student Art Contest. As an art contest for students, entries were received from grade levels 5 through college with the vast majority of entries being submitted by non-U.S. students.

A number of entries were disqualified for failing to meet the contest’s few but clearly stated criteria. Unfortunately some of the art disqualified was pretty good. Even worse, there were a few submissions of plagiarized work. For example, taking an existing work of space art and running an edges filter on it does not give an "artist" the right to call it their own art. Worse yet is lying about the process and claiming it to be a drawing by hand.

Aside: As a digital artist who enjoys writing his own image processing and digital art software, one of the self-challenges I used to do quite regularly was analyzing digital art and attempting to figure out exactly how it was created and what software was used. This process helped me to develop my own programs and to have a better feel for the overall digital art creation process.

The judging of the art consisted of two stages. In the first stage, I, Lynne Zielinski (contest manager), and David Brandt-Erichsen (fellow judge) went through the art eliminating those entries that clearly failed to meet the stated criteria regarding size, subject, and content. Once this was done, I created a browsable version of initially valid submissions and distributed that package to the panel of judges (there were six of us judging the art). We had a total of 125 entries to judge with a remarkable 66 coming from 5th graders, the largest grade submission category by far. In contrast, there were only 2 submissions from 6th graders.

It was two weeks ago that all contest judges had a web conference to judge all the accepted entries. It was quite the marathon session with some of the art submitted generating significant discussion. The structure of the art contest’s rules provided us with complete latitude when it came to selecting winning art entries. In fact, we judges were not required to select any entries as winners if we decided that all were of sub-standard quality. Fortunately that was not the case. It was at this stage that we looked more seriously at whether or not the submitted art fully met our subject and content criteria. Unfortunately a large number did not. The most common shortcoming was the failure to show any people in the artwork – as showing people living and working in space was a central theme to the contest.

The easiest part of the entire process was selecting the art to be awarded the Grand Prize. We judges immediately and unanimously chose Pioneers of the Cosmos, a digital painting submitted by Adrianna Allen, as the Grand Prize winner. Adrianna attends Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, MI.

The judges awarded one First Prize for the submission Space Aviary by Vindya Malla, an 11th grader from India.

There were also three Honorable Mentions awarded. A very well done work of 3D digital art was the piece Micro-Gravity Lunar Orbit Research Center Apollo submitted by Hidayat Saad, a college student from Malaysia. Frankly I thought this artwork to be deserving of a First Prize. The second Honorable Mention went to The Martians submitted by Pranab Kumar Padhi, a 12th grader from India. The artwork depicts a settlement on Mars. What most sold this artwork to the judges was a table of people in the foreground having a meeting. The third and final Honorable Mention went to Shuttle Transport Station (shown below) submitted by Anushka Hebbar, a 9th grader from India. Given Anushka’s wonderful depiction of an O’Neill Colony, this was my second favorite submission to the contest and I thought it should have been awarded a First Prize. So Anushka Hebbar: consider this my personal congratulations to you for your wonderful submission.

The National Space Society is holding a student space art contest which is free to enter and is open to students aged 13-25 years old world-wide. The theme for this art contest is life in a space settlement. Submissions to the contest are to focus on the daily activities of living and working in a space settlement located somewhere in the solar system. A key rule for art being submitted to the contest is that it has to be a realistic depiction of human activities. That means no aliens, no faster-than-light UFOs, and no other violations of science. The contest is particularly interested in photo-realistic submissions.

The contest’s Grand Prize winner will have their artwork published on the cover of Ad Astra magazine as well as receiving a complimentary membership in the National Space Society and complimentary registration to the 2015 International Space Development Conference being held in Toronto, Canada.

In addition to the Grand Prize, First Prizes and Honorable Mentions may also be awarded depending on the artistic merit of the submitted entries. I must point out that the contest does contain a provision that if none of the art submitted adequately meets contest standards, then no prizes shall be awarded – which is reasonable given that unlike most other art contests there is no fee charged to submit art for this contest.

For my part, I will again be serving as one of the art judges for the contest. Here are some tips from me for students submitting art. First, if your artwork is set inside a space settlement then have a window in the scene so that the viewer can identify where in the solar system your settlement is. Second, since the art is to depict settlement life, make sure to have a person somewhere in your artwork. Third, if the subject of your art is an astronaut exploring or working on the surface of the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid, then make sure that you have some sort of habitat somewhere in your scene. For example, an astronaut exploring the surface of an asteroid with a settlement in the distance, either on the surface of the asteroid or in orbit above it. Lastly, be sure to get your science right. In one space art contest I judged, the artist had an astronaut in a spacesuit on the surface of the Moon standing next to a pool of water. No matter how good your art is, if you do something like that your art will not be a winning entry.

Submissions to this art contest are due by March 16. Students who are under age 18 must have their parents permission in order to participate.

The Illustration

To illustrate this post I used some of my own space art. Dustfall on Mars is a piece I was commissioned to create for presentation to Mars Society President Robert Zubrin on his 65th birthday. Unlike much of my art, this piece is a straight forward example of painting digitally. The version shown here has been cropped.

I do enjoy judging space art contests because not only is the artistic composition and skill of the artist judged, but so too is the realism, accuracy, and practicality of the artist’s vision with respect to space engineering. For this contest, artists were expected to create art that satisfied either of two milestones outlined in the National Space Society’s Roadmap to Space Settlement. The two milestones were:

In judging the art, judges were expected to evaluate the submitted art based on the following criteria:

The art had to compositionally satisfy either milestone 18 or 19 shown above.

The art had to be a realistic depiction of a space settlement or associated activities. For example, the works of Chesley Bonestell, Pat Rawlings, or David Hardy are examples of the realistic representation of space development activities.

If the art is an interior scene, then there has to be some aspect of the artwork that makes it clear that the setting is not of this Earth. Obviously the easiest way to satisfy this criteria is to provide a window through which can be seen the surface of the Moon for example.

The artwork should have an uplifting, positive message. On the flip side, art depicting battle scenes or criminal activity, etc. were not to be considered.

The art had to be non-offensive and family-appropriate.

No art with identifiable individuals, real or fictional. The sole exception was if the artist wanted to include themself in the art.

With respect to this art contest, there were three things that disappointed me.

First, I was most disappointed to see over the course of the contest submissions of art that had been taken from NASA and commercial sources and submitted as original works. The contest rules were quite clear on the requirement that the submitting artist be the creator of the art submitted. Fortunately none of these works made it into the contest’s art gallery. As I did during last year’s contest, I advised the committee to issue a ban for life for anyone submitting stolen art to the contest.

Second, it was a real disappointment for me that there was not one single submission from a student from the United States. (Note: I’m not aware of the nationality of those submitters whose art was rejected on the grounds of plagiarism or inappropriate content). So kudos to the student artists from India (6), Romania (4), and the Czech Republic (1).

Third, I was disappointed that there were not more submissions to the contest. I think this was due to the lack of promotion for the contest.

Back to judging the art, I was surprised by how easy it was for us to reach a consensus. According to the contest rules, we were to award one grand prize, up to 10 first prizes, and optionally an honorable mention. We awarded one grand prize, one first prize, and one honorable mention.

The Grand Prize went to Bogdan Alexandru Cionca, an 11th grader from Romania, for the submission Arcturus Space Settlement which illustrated the asteroid-related milestone. This is the artwork I’ve used to illustrate this post. We awarded a First Prize to Aleksandra Voinea, a 12th grader also from Romania, for Asteroid Mining near Mars, another asteroid-related artwork. Lastly we awarded an Honorable Mention to Tudor Tomescu, an 11th grader from Romania for Ancesius Asteroid-Mounted Settlement. So it was a clean sweep for students from Romania.

Last Thursday I gave my Art and the Exploration of Space talk to the Lake Barrington Shores Men’s Club. Lake Barrington Shores is a gated community north of Barrington IL. I was surprised to learn that one of the ladies in the audience had been the Maid of honor at Neil Armstrong’s wedding. Fortunately I did get to speak with her briefly about some of her recollections of Neil and his days as an Apollo astronaut. I was also surprised to see several works of space art on display – provided by a friend of one of the club members. It was also a pleasure to speak with a fellow space art aficionado.

Somewhat on the impulsive side, a few days before I was slated to give this talk I decided to totally redo my presentation. I’d first given this particular space art talk in 2009 and had made no substantive changes to it during the intervening years. Turns out I was working on the new version right up until midnight the night before I was set to give it. In hindsight, I’m glad that I made that impulsive decision because the changes and additions improved the quality of the presentation.

Cosmetically I restructured all the slides so that I could enlarge the space art that appeared on each slide. More importantly I added a section on space art used specifically to illustrate future space development concepts like space solar power, asteroid mining, and space tourism. This allowed me to not only broaden the scope of the space art I discussed but also allowed me to introduce the associated concepts to my audience. I also added a section on the use of space art to illustrate newspace ventures. This allowed me to discuss the newspace paradigm of space exploration. I should point out that as President of the Chicago Society for Space Studies, my principal presentation is The NewSpace Frontier.

I also added in some of my own space art to extend on some of the topic areas I was addressing. Being able to speak on a first-hand basis about my own art strengthened the points that I was attempting to make.

The National Space Society (NSS) has announced its Roadmap to Space Settlement 2014 International Student Art Contest. The objective of this art contest is to get students creating space art that can be used to illustrate Milestones to Space Settlement: An NSS Roadmap, a strategic space development planning document that was created to clearly illustrate a path forward in the quest to create a spacefaring civilization.

The artistic theme for this contest is the realistic depiction of either an asteroid settlement or a space settlement that is under construction. With respect to asteroid settlements, asteroids are potentially valuable resources due to their composition. The presence of natural resources combined with a low gravity environment makes them an ideal location for mining operations. Unfortunately there has been very little asteroid settlement art created to date.

While there is an abundance of space art depicting space settlements, there is a scarcity of art that shows these settlements in the process of being built – hence the art category for the construction of space settlements.

The requirement that the art must be a realistic depiction of either an asteroid settlement or a space settlement under construction will hopefully lead the student artists to first do some basic research on the subject.

The art contest is open to full-time students aged 12 to 25 world-wide. Art must be submitted by March 16, 2014 with the winners announced by April 1, 2014. In terms of prizes, there will be one Grand Prize and up to 12 First Prizes awarded on a school grade level basis. There is also an opportunity for some artwork to be awarded an Honorable Mention. Details for the prizes for the art contest’s winners is detailed on the contest web site (listed below).

My Role as Art Judge

As one of the judges for the art contest, I will be paying attention to the aesthetics of the compositions. But artistic aesthetics will take a back seat to realism. It will be obvious which artists researched the subject and which artists did not. One suggestion I have for student artists entering the contest is to seek out a science teacher for advice on the science and engineering of living and working in space.

In closing I want to wish all students entering the contest the best of luck and do urge you to research the subject of your painting (digital or otherwise). Approach your art project as though you were an engineer or an architect out to create a real working space settlement. Do that and you will greatly improve your chances of being a winner in the contest.